HLTB21H3 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Social Inequality, Smallpox, Typhoid Fever
Document Summary
> very densely unpopulated: spread of infectious disease restricted by transitory lifestyles and broad geographical ranges of such groups, with migration & population expansion: contact with disease, most dramatic shift in human-microorganism interactions occurred within past. 10-15,000 years, due to agriculture and sedentism (non-migratory lifestyle)then urbanization and industrialization. Micro pathogens and worms are very effective pathogens that can wipe out a population. Epidemiological transition: with expanding historical populations, mortality declined and structure of causes of death shifted from predominantly infectious diseases to mostly chronic degenerative diseases (due to faster decline of infectious diseases due to technological and behavioural changes) Today we"re in a declining phase (in most western nations)- more of us dying than being born. Stable phase: adoption of birth control, which led families to decrease in size; post ww2 when they"re not dying because of infectious disease but rather with chronic diseases.
